In the late fall of 1983, the US Congress passed a bill declaring the third Monday of January each year as Martin Luther King Jr. Day. President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law on November 2, 1983, fifteen years after King’s assassination. Passage of this bill had not been easy, as some conservatives and southern members of Congress had issued strong objections to it.More »

by James T. Patterson

From the earliest years of European settlement in North America, whites enslaved and oppressed black people.More »